Page 50

Monday morning finds me in my corner office at Rhodes, Mercer & Vance before sunrise.

I strip off my suit jacket, roll my sleeves past my forearms, and bury myself in trial prep. By eight thirty, I've marked up fifty pages of exhibits and drafted two summary judgment motions with cold, mechanical focus.

"You're going to wear a groove into that desk," Chris Vance says, leaning against my doorway.

Chris is fifty, with silver at his temples and the sharp, unreadable eyes of a man who has spent twenty-five years cross-examining witnesses. He walks in, sets a black coffee on my blotter, and drops into the leather armchair across from me.

"You've billed thirty hours since Friday night," Chris says quietly. "What's going on, Brock?"

I don't look up from my screen. "I'm working."

"You're running," Chris counters. "When you're furious with opposing counsel, you get quiet. When you're trying to outrun your own head, you bill eighty-hour weeks. What happened?"

I stare at the blinking cursor, exhaling a hard breath. "I pushed too hard. She asked for space because being with me puts her career on the line."

"And what did you do?"

"I told her I could handle it."

Chris raises an eyebrow. "You told her you'd handle it, or you told her how it was going to be?"

The question lands with the force of a hammer.

"You're a brilliant trial lawyer, Brock," Chris says, his voice dry and measured. "When a case gets complicated, you take total command of the room and force the outcome you want. But a relationship isn't a courtroom, and she isn't a client. If she's carrying the risk, she gets to decide how the risk is handled."

Before I can answer, my laptop chimes with an incoming email notification flagged from my personal inbox.

I click over. The email has been forwarded by David Gable, a room parent whose wife coordinates volunteer events for Megan's second-grade class.

The subject line reads: Fwd: Parent Involvement Guidelines & Maintaining Professional Classroom Boundaries.

Attached is a mass communication sent from Jennifer Marsh's district email address to grade-level leads, Principal Harrison, and several parent volunteers.

My eyes scan the text:

...concerns have recently been raised regarding excessive, private access. When an individual male parent makes frequent, unscheduled visits to a specific classroom, provides disproportionate personal funding and luxury supplies, and directs exclusive attention toward one teacher, it compromises our community standards and risks the appearance of favoritism or inappropriate personal ties...

A cold, lethal fury locks around my chest.

Jennifer didn't name me, and she didn't name Megan. But she described every interaction I've had with Kayla's classroom over the past year—the art supplies, the field trip sponsorships, the drop-offs. She took legitimate, documented support for my daughter's education, twisted it into sordid gossip, and broadcasted it directly to other parents from a district account.

"What is that?" Chris asks, leaning forward.

I turn the monitor toward him.

Chris reads in silence, his expression hardening with every line. When he looks up, his eyes are pure litigator. "Who sent this?"

"Jennifer Marsh. A third-grade teacher at the school."

"She sent this to parents?" Chris shakes his head in disbelief. "This isn't just petty gossip. She used official district communication channels to circulate unverified insinuations about a colleague and a student's family to private citizens. She handed the district a massive liability on a silver platter."

"She's retaliating," I say, my voice dangerously level. "She's been cornering me in the hallways for weeks asking for personal dinners. I shut her down every time."

"And when that didn't work, she decided to drag Kayla's teacher into it." Chris leans back, watching me carefully. "What are you going to do?"

Every instinct in me wants to drive to the school, find Jennifer Marsh, and tear her career apart where she stands. But that would create a public spectacle, validate the drama, and make things ten times worse for Megan.

This isn't about my pride. It's about Jennifer weaponizing her position to intimidate a colleague and drag my eight-year-old daughter's school into her jealousy.